News
All the latest news about the movie adaptation of
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
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New stills of Sejanus Plinth, Lucky Flickerman and Lucy Gray Baird on Nerdist.Com -
Meet the Tributes of the 10th Hunger Games in New Images on Collider -
Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler and Josh Andres Rivera LIVE on Good Morning America -
New Behind The Scenes videos of Hunter Schafer and Viola Davis on set -
New Coriolanus x Sejanus Ad-Teaser for The Ballad Songbirds & Snakes
Media & Interview
- 09/01/2023
- The Mockingjay's Nest
Exclusive new HQ Still and Interview in Empire Magazine
Empire Magazine has just revealed an exclusive still from “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” depicting Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird entering the arena. Beside them, we can see Peacekeepers escorting them, along with other mentors (Lysistrata Vickers) and tributes (Jessup).
The image is taken from an article containing an exclusive interview with Francis Lawrence discussing the prequel. Read Empire’s exclusive The Hunger Games story, speaking to director Francis Lawrence, in full in the new Dune: Part Two issue, on sale Thursday 31 August.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’ Lucy Gray Baird Is The ‘Opposite’ Of Katniss Everdeen, Says Director Francis Lawrence: ‘She’s A Performer’
The franchise, both in book and movie form, was a huge success, but returning director Francis Lawrence (who helmed sequels Catching Fire and both _Mockingjay_s) still had a big concern at the front of his mind going into making the prequel. “Will people go see a new Hunger Games movie without Katniss?” he asks Empire, speaking to us exclusively for our brand new Dune: Part Two issue. It’s a good question, but one the new film has an answer for. Enter Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from District 12 chosen to compete in the tenth annual Hunger Games, and to whom young Snow is assigned as a mentor. She is the ‘anti-Katniss’, as Lawrence puts it. “Katniss was an introvert and a survivor,” he says. “She was quite quiet and stoic, you could almost say [she was] asexual. Lucy Gray is the opposite. She wears her sexuality on her sleeve, [and] she really is
a performer.”
Where Katniss was a reluctant face of the rebellion, who had to be forced to put on a smile on camera, and keep her fake-turned-real love story with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) convincing so as to get the public on her side, Lucy Gray relishes the spotlight. Where Katniss was deadly with a bow, Lucy Gray uses her wiles as a weapon. “She loves crowds,” says Lawrence. “She knows how to play crowds and manipulate people.” May the odds be ever in her favour.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Kicks Off Its Arena Sequence With A Scene Known As ‘The Bloodbath’ – Exclusive
Set several decades before Katniss volunteered as tribute, it instead hinges on Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute being mentored by (the later-to-be-villainous-President) Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) for the 10th annual Hunger Games. That means audiences are heading back in the maelstrom – just as Zegler did on the first day of shooting. “The opening of the games we call ‘the bloodbath’,” director Francis Lawrence tells Empire, “and that’s exactly what she had to jump into right away.” So quickly, in fact, that she’d only left the set of Disney’s Snow White mere days previously. “She was leaving [the set] bruised pretty much every day, but those fighter qualities came in.”
More familiar territory, though, came with something Zegler excelled at in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story: Lucy Gray Baird is also a singer, and her voice will ring out over the games in the film. “It was so emotional to hear the song, which is an a cappella piece that she sings near the end of the arena sequence,” the director explains. “I think it stunned everybody.” Coming in the wake of ‘the bloodbath’, just don’t expect a big pop hit.
The film will play up to its new hero’s performative personality with a series of musical numbers, some of which come courtesy of Lucy Gray’s troupe, the Covey. Zegler was learning the guitar when she came on board and had tutorials to further prepare for the role, while Lawrence gave her country music from the 1930s to listen to. A particularly key performance will occur at a crucial point in the games. “It was so emotional to hear the song, which is an a cappella piece that she sings near the end of the arena sequence,” he says. “I think it stunned everybody.”
After one of these songs, she delivers a slow, defiant bow to the crowd, a nod to Katniss and proof that some connective tissue exists between the polar-opposite protagonists. “The bow was actually not scripted,” Lawrence reveals. “I thought it could be really interesting, aw [we] start to develop more history and mythology, if somebody else long before [Katniss] had done that.” She may be the anti-Katniss, but Lucy Gray has a rebellious side of her own.